


Bad Influence

by BettyBiscay



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: F/M, Smut and Angst, what's not to love?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 10:47:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5825584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BettyBiscay/pseuds/BettyBiscay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's all too easy to blame the affair on him, to blame him for the passion and the reckless secret meetings, and in the end, she's not sure she can bring herself to regret it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Influence

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by A Particular Understanding by Naiade. No mentions of magic (or Olaf) and set firmly in the 1840’s.

Hans was a bad influence. He taught her to cheat at cards and drink brennevín without grimacing. With him, she chokingly tried her first cigar and discovered a taste for them as she overlooked council notes. He held her too close as they danced and he whispered too intimately in her ear. She began to order her corset laced tighter and delighted at the way he stared. She wore heavy jewels and glittering tiaras, flaunting the royal treasures of the Crown he had vainly tried to posses. She wore them to vex him, and thrilled in inciting his temper. 

She sought him out in his quiet working moments. She interrupted him when he was with attendants. She broke his concentration and demanded his attention at her convenience. Once, she disrupted a lawn game and rebuked him for neglecting obligations she spontaneously invented. He stood, bewildered, for a moment before she led him away from her pretty ladies-in-waiting with a smug grin. He taught her to be greedy, and she claimed him for herself. 

She was quarrelous, she was contrary, and she goaded him until he snapped. She pushed him with wordless invitation to push back, reveling in the tension that coiled and wound around them, pulling them closer until they were nose to nose and breathing hard. 

In her council and in her court she favored those who were mild and sedate, but her heart leapt and her blood raced when she saw him desperate and frustrated. She liked when he rucked up her skirts with dangerous impatience. She liked when he pulled her laces loose so hard they snapped and she was forced to think of a lie to tell her maid. She liked when he was rough, and exulted when he led her to privacy and left bruises on the insides of her thighs.

She learned her own taste from dazed kisses after he laved her until she was blind with feeling. He teased dark secrets from her, loosening her tongue with his own. Through gasps she acquiesced and made her confession. She was bored with deference, and so she provoked him. She anticipated his breaking point, giddy when he crushed her to him and demanded her silence with his mouth. With him she craved a powerlessness that came not from abdication, but from large hands that pinned her wrists and held her down. He didn’t absolve her, but emboldened her. 

During dinners and at council and in the study she found herself distracted, watching him grasp a spoon or a pen or flick through a book. Once, he caught her staring in a meeting. He slid his hand under the table and carefully stroked himself until she could see a thickening outline under his trousers. She looked away and schooled her face into a neutral expression, but she felt hot and slick. 

He taught her which library the council members abandoned for an afternoon brandy, which rooms were vacant during servant’s meals, and which table in the music room was sturdiest.

In the nights before him she relied on her own small fingers to bring herself off and found them wanting, but when he cleaved her behind a towering bookshelf she finally found torturous satisfaction. He eased one of his own fingers into her, then another. Her cheeks still burned at the memory of the desperate groan that escaped him when he finally slid a third finger into her. 

He taught her to beg for what she wanted, she who never needed to beg for anything. As Her Majesty she had barely the need to ask for anything at all, but alone with him and divested of her crown, he forced her to say the words. He feigned ignorance when she pulled at him and delighted at the blush that bled down her face and neck and chest as she whispered _ touch me, bite me, fuck me.  _

He taught her the dirty words he learned from his navy garrison. During a real argument, not one she spurred on, he swore at her. For a long moment they were silent. He stood defiant, ready for her to cut him down and send him away. The air crackled between them, and suddenly she discovered her outrage evaporated into a heady neediness. She assailed him. She tore at him, stripping his cravat and waistcoat to grab a fistful of his shirt. She forced him to bend down to meet her and captured his mouth. He allowed her to kiss him bruisingly but seized her wrists as she made to pull the shirt from his trousers. He swiftly twisted her arms behind her and steered her until she was pressed against the wall. 

He yanked up expansive skirts and parted the slit in her pantalettes and stroked her. With a breathless moan she arched her back, rocking her hips against him.  _ You have the most beautiful  _ ass _. Don’t you know what I’d like to do to you? _ He released her and grabbed her behind possessively before smacking it with an open palm. She let out a strangled cry, and he smacked her again, just hard enough to sting.  _ Tell me you want my _ cock.  _ Tell me you want me in your pretty little _ pussy. He dipped his fingers into her, and she hastily stepped wider, tripping over pooled satin.  _ Tell me you want me to  _ fuck  _ you _ . 

She groaned and chanted  _ yes yes yes yes yes _ . He pulled himself free from his trousers and took her against the wall. He breathed a steady stream of curses in her ear until her knees buckled and she fell against him, trembling hard. Then he pressed a kiss against her neck and helped her straighten her skirts. 

He taught her to crave the adrenaline and thrill of the secret. She quitted dark rooms with her head high, if slightly disheveled, and met the eyes of servants with her own unabashed gaze. Clandestine meetings grew bolder, and he guided her to rooms less remote. As he pushed into her on a divan in the lounge they could hear the bustle of the dinner service being set in the room adjacent. She clenched hard around him as a servant rattled at the locked door. In the State Library she slid him progressively more indecent notes until he shoved them into his pocket and stalked away. She excused herself from the meeting and followed. Two rows away from the ministers of finance he pulled her to the floor and covered her mouth with a hot hand to stifle her moans. 

He taught her to be selfish, and when her privy council decided to begin the search for a husband, she let him whisper each suitor’s fault in her ear until she could look at them and see only that they had an insignificant military, that they tried to speak over her, that they breathed too noisily. 

She learned that she could pluck at his jealousy with gratifying results. When a spotty lord impudently tucked a loose hair behind her ear, Hans’ knuckles blanched as he gripped the arms of his chair. For the first time she noticed the way his eyes flashed when men came too close, and she began a new game. To the boring men who came to beg her favor, she showed new consideration. She lingered a hand on an elbow or bent to their ear to whisper unimportant confidences, and each responded eagerly, desperate to be in the Queen’s good graces. They flirted shamelessly with her, and Elsa found endless pleasure in the way Hans bristled.

 

For long months she rejected envoys of men, and delighted in the way Hans kissed her when she told him another lord or duke had been sent away.  It was the proper thing to see them to the docks, but she figured it was nearly the same when Hans found that the solarium on the fourth floor had a perfect view overlooking the harbor. He’d lay her down on the potting table so her head dangled off the edge, and as the table creaked beneath them she watched, upside down, as the defeated suitors boarded their ships. 

When the second son of the King of Livonia arrived, however, the council agreed he was too powerful of an ally to be dismissed. Livonia controlled the waters of the North Sea and offered tariff-free trade access with the countries it controlled. 

The prince of Livonia was far more handsome than anyone expected. He charmed her easily, explaining over dinner the reason the miniature portrait she was sent did not do him justice; the prince was a terrible cheat at cards, and the painter had begrudgingly surrendered too much money to resist taking revenge out on his likeness. 

The prince made her laugh, and she found he made easy company. He requested her audience daily, and she granted him personal tours of the castle, the grounds, and anywhere else he thought  of to keep her attention. The council heavily approved, and his appearance became ubiquitous. 

On a wet and drizzly day, they sat at a table playing cards when the prince of Livonia noticed her hair had begun to wilt from her coiffure. He tucked it into place, and Elsa quickly looked to Hans. He stared deliberately at his hand, and carefully laid an eight of clubs on the table. For the rest of the afternoon she couldn’t catch his eye. 

Long after the castle fell asleep that night, he came to her rooms and found her waiting. He fucked her the way she liked, the way she asked for, and left wordlessly. 

He was absent more and more from social hours, and she made a point not to seek him out. Without a chaperone, she rode with the prince of Livonia. She allowed him to hold her hand, to press a kiss to her cheek, and at a luncheon, he proclaimed his earnest love for her on bended knee. 

 

She didn’t see Hans again until after she signed the marriage treaty. 

 

After a long banquet dinner she slipped away from the drawing room and ordered a scalding bath drawn. She sunk low in the water and waited. Hans slipped in the room after her maid left, still in his dinner jacket. Illuminated by the fire, she recognized the set to his jaw. The day’s stress, the endless signatures and congratulations, all settled to an a writhing mass below her middle. It had been unbearably long since she’d last had him, and her heart thumped hard in her breast. 

He had taught her to be impatient, and now she wanted him to cross to her, to take her in his arms and kiss her and touch her until the bathwater grew cold. Her mind raced with anticipation, imagining all the ways he could bring her off, but he stood still at the door, a paper clenched in his hand. 

She recognized it before he began to read it aloud- the evening paper’s front page, blazoned with her wedding announcement. She tried to interrupt him, to make him come to her, but he didn’t pause. 

_Her Majesty the Queen announces her betrothal to Prince — of Livonia._

He read it with a calmness that belied the way his hands gripped the page. His fingers were black with smudged ink. Elsa itched to rip the paper from him and throw it into the fire. Instead, he creased it carefully and folded it into his pocket. 

“I suppose congratulations are in order.” He said. 

“Thank you,” she said stiffly. She glided her fingers along the surface of the water, determined not to look at him. 

“He’s a good match.”

“He is, thank you,” She repeated, quieter. Hans stuffed his hands in his pockets. 

“He’s handsome, and a smart political choice. I don’t suppose you could have done any better.” 

Elsa was suddenly struck with the memory of watching him practice fencing in the courtyard. He was calculating and careful, striking lightning quick until the guardsman was cornered. He approached her now with the same deliberate steps, and she realized that for all their dueling, he had never faced her as he did now, as an opponent. 

“Hans, I-” 

“How soon until he moves into your apartments?” He interrupted, “But I suppose he’s already been to your bedroom.” 

Her throat was dry, and she swallowed hard before speaking. “You know he hasn’t. He has his own rooms.” 

“So do I.” 

“It’s nothing like that with him, we don’t- I don’t- It isn’t like you and I,” She stammered.

“Yes, you made it clear our positions,” Hans’ words were tight, strung like a bow set to break. 

When he came in the room she hoped the set of his jaw was the same one she had encouraged with a thousand teasing touches, the one that signaled he would drive into her until she sobbed, the one that promised to leave her trembling and weak. But his jaw was an unfamiliar hard line, tendons straining to keep himself intact. He spoke deliberately, like each word was an effort.

“I have been yours, and only yours, as long as I have been here. You have been my constant, the only woman in my life in this castle. And I haven’t minded- I wanted it. But now I’m forced to see you and him- your fiance- every day. I knew, I knew when that first idiot came to make a bid for you this day would come. But you pushed it off, and I wanted to think it was because of me, that it was for me. I wanted to think-” He cut himself off and clenched his fists before continuing. “I didn’t think I would have to find out from the Evening Post.” 

Each Thursday afternoon before tea from the age of ten until her coronation Elsa received elocution lessons. She spoke with purpose and without hesitation before heads of state, her council, and the commonwealth. Yet now she struggled to find words to say, now when it was crushingly important to explain how her hands had been tied behind her back since the prince arrived. How she’d felt trapped and paralyzed since she knew what being crown princess meant. Her life was a set course decided by the council, all while they pretended that she was sovereign. She had been repressed and alone for so long, and Hans offered her a chance to be flesh and bone and alive.

It felt too much, all at once. The perfumed soap her maid poured in the tub was cloying. She sweltered in the water, the room stifling. She stood abruptly, water sloshing deafeningly loud in the quiet. She stepped out of the tub, and he waited while she wrapped herself in a towel. 

“Do you love me?” She said, and it hung in the air, heavy and terrible. She clung to the towel, her only armor against him and the answer she didn’t want to hear. 

“I wish I didn’t.” 

Elsa closed her eyes tight and stood still and rigid for two breaths, three breaths, and tried to wrestle the tightness that choked her and squeezed her heart in a vice grip. She was suffocating, and crossed the room to sink on the stool in front of the vanity. 

“I have no choice, I have to marry him.” She spoke to her reflection with the inflection of a mantra. 

“I know.” He stood close behind her, and traced a rivulet of water down her spine. He was too tall for Elsa to see his face in the mirror. “I’m leaving in the morning.” 

Elsa’s eyes burned, and she twisted the edge of her towel, desperate to find something to do with her hands. 

He had taught her to be bold and unapologetic. He had taught her make demands and order him with unflinching ease, but now she couldn’t keep her voice from wavering.

“Will you stay with me tonight?” 

Elsa felt the weight of eternity in the pause before his answer. She wanted to stay in that moment of unbearable suspension, when she could believe in a chance he would say yes. When she could believe he would stay and hold her and make her forget about every blasted paper she ever had to sign. 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” 

Hans pressed a soft kiss to her temple and left, closing the door behind him. The fire crackled quietly, and a ragged sob tore from Elsa’s throat. 

 

The wedding was a massive affair. With Elsa and the prince’s status, guests arrived from all over the continent. Foreign ministers seeking alliances, distant relatives seeking favors, and a few cousins that wished well. Arendelle buzzed with activity throughout the engagement. Every house, storefront, and street was washed and made sparkling. The town bloomed with banners and flowers planted specially for the occasion. Every inch of the castle was scrubbed, and priceless heirlooms were brought from storage to display and impress. 

They married in the cathedral she was coronated in, and Elsa felt the same nauseating dread standing at the head of the church. The prince squeezed her fingers when they joined hands. She didn’t meet his eyes. The priest spoke of honor and duty before he mentioned love, and Elsa forced herself not to look to the sea of faces crowded in the pews. She didn’t want to see if the representative of the Southern Isles was seated among them. 

In the six months before the wedding she had written to him innumerably. She wrote, and rewrote, and crossed out lines with thick black ink that soaked through the page. The letters never made it beyond her desk. She crumpled them and watched her words burn in the fireplace. 

She let her minister of public affairs send the invitations and told him they didn’t need her approval. 

A trousseau was ordered, and fittings occupied the empty hours of her day. An army of dresses, underthings, and monogrammed linens were basted and pinned and sewn in a flurry. Her wedding gown was a monumental undertaking of white satin in the new style. The skirt and veil trailed behind her for yards, embroidered with crystalline patterns. It was heavy and cumbersome, requiring two attendants to mind its train. When it was completed it was hung in her apartment, looming in the archway of her sitting room.

The day before the wedding she was recused from her duties. Her ladies-in-waiting insisted she rest, and so she haunted her apartments all day. She accepted few visitors and found excuses to send them away before they stayed long. Anna buzzed incessantly and needed persuading before she’d leave Elsa free to pace her rooms in peace. A dinner tray was brought up, but Elsa only halfheartedly poked at it before she abandoned it for the drinks cart. 

At sunset Elsa sat on the floor before her wedding gown, fingering the little seed pearls sewn on the hem. It was pinned to a dress form, a headless specter in the gloomy twilight. She hadn’t bothered to light the lamps, letting the shadows in the room reflect her mood. 

The door to the hall opened, and a slash of light fell onto the carpet before vanishing as the door swung shut again. Elsa knocked over her glass in her haste to stand, the last of her drink seeping into the rug.  

Without a word Hans crossed to her, yanking away his cravat before crushing her to him. He tangled a hand in her hair and braced her jaw in the other, forcing her mouth to his. He kissed her hungrily, fiercely, like a man at his last meal, and she reciprocated in kind. She starved in the months away from him and pulled him closer, clutching fistfuls of his shirt. 

She had wanted him desperately, had scarcely allowed herself to hope for him, and now he was here. How many disapproving looks he must have garnered at dinner, if he did attend dinner at all. Had he been disappointed to see she hadn’t come down? Did he wait impatiently until the dessert course was cleared and he could beg away? Or did he come straight to her rooms as soon as he arrived, knowing she wouldn’t want to be trapped at a table of well-wishers and endless toasts. There were so many questions she wanted him to answer, but the same restraint that kept her from sending a letter kept her silent. She didn’t know if she could bear to hear anything of his life away from her, his life outside her rooms, and so she kissed him instead and tried not to think anymore.

His hands left her for a moment before finding the buttons on high collar of her dress. He swiftly undid the modest bodice, exposing the swell of her breasts pressed high by her corset. Before she could shrug out of her sleeves he was already fumbling with the hem of her skirt. He reached under petticoats to unknot her pantalettes and yanked them down her thighs. 

His hungry eyes met hers, and she wanted to devour him, to wrap herself inside him and undo him. The buttons on his trousers were difficult, but she freed him and grasped his cock in hand. She sat on her heels and engulfed him with her mouth, swallowing reflexively. She bobbed twice before he fisted her hair and tugged her away.

“I’ve wanted you too long to wait.” He said roughly, and pushed her down on the floor. 

She opened for him, spreading her stockinged thighs wide, and he dropped to kneel before her. She clutched his hip, nails digging crescent moons into his flesh, as he guided himself into her. 

She let her head tip back, dizzy, lost in the feel of him and the warm glow of brennivin in her belly. Her eyes locked on something behind him, and he followed her gaze. The silver embroidery of her dress glimmered in the dim light, and he angrily grabbed her jaw, twisting her head to face him again. 

“Will he fuck you like me? Will he make you feel as good as I do?” 

He drove into her with hard, punishing strokes. Her corset dug into her ribs, and she struggled to breathe. Her heart pounded, and the world narrowed to just him above her.

“When he’s in your bed you’ll think of me, won’t you? When his cock is inside you, you’ll think about me between your legs?” 

“Yes,” She gasped, and he propped himself up on one arm.   

“You’re mine, don’t you know that? All of you. Say you’re mine,” 

His fingers found her clit and he rubbed until she felt herself spiraling out of control, the tightness in her belly winding higher and higher, and she came with a choked cry. 

“I’m yours, I’m all yours, God, I’m yours,” Her head swam and she chanted mindlessly, “I love you, I’m yours, I love you, I love you.” 

Hans froze within her, rooted to the spot. She contracted and ground weakly against him, wringing out pleasure until she fell back, boneless and spent. The world fell into dizzying focus and she met his eyes. 

Hans taught her to shed embarrassment as easily as her clothes, and she could stand before him undressed and at ease, in control. Half dressed and pinned under him on her rug, though, she felt naked to the bone. She felt skinned and raw, and blushed furiously. 

He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her nose, her lips, and pulled out of her. He led her to the bedroom and undressed her, undressed himself, and laid her gently on the bed. He fucked her slowly, sweetly, and taught her how to make love.

 

In the early hours of the morning, she woke with Hans wrapped around her. Her legs tangled with his, and she was sticky between her thighs. She rolled to face him and found he’d been looking at her, awake for some time. Or perhaps he hadn’t slept at all. 

“I have to go. My wife will wonder where I am.” 

She lay in the rumpled sheets, hollow and exhausted, and watched him dress. He closed the door with a tight click, and Elsa turned her head away to swallow the terrible lump in her throat. 

 

There was no exchange of rings. The prince provided the diamond parure that glittered and refracted the light streaming through the stained glass, and she provided him the title of King Consort. Bells rang out, echoing all over the city as the priest declared them man and wife. Her husband lifted her veil and pressed a kiss to her cold lips. 

In the receiving line, the representative of the Southern Isles bowed before the bride and groom. The woman on his arm curtseyed deeply, and wished the couple congratulations with a wide smile. She had platinum hair and clear blue eyes.

Elsa had forgotten her father’s mantra. Hans taught her to feel, and she abandoned it blindly. He unmade her and molded a new woman in her place, a woman who could be held and possessed and vulnerable. She felt the eyes of hundreds of dignitaries and guests and wished that she had never been touched, that she had never left her exile and isolation.

In her youth, etiquette instructors piled books atop Elsa’s head and made her practice walking for hours to perfect her balance. They told her that a corset would keep her back straight and rigid, but that poise came from within. She could stand tall and unbending through torturously long meetings and dinners that felt eternal, but in the sweltering ballroom, Elsa felt the entire weight of her crown settle heavily on her head and threaten to buckle her knees.

 

Hans resigned as ambassador the next day. Elsa stood in the solarium, sore from a clumsy wedding night, and watched him board his ship back to the Southern Isles. 

Eight and a half months later she gave birth to a girl with bright red hair, and wept bitterly. 


End file.
